I came to feminism via reading and writing. Books are the most important element of my life, and so I decided to go someplace where I could work with books, where I could make a difference (compared to my experience in academia), and where I could in fact keep working with feminist ideas.
There are, I am sure, groups committed to social change which are much more effective, but I do not think I found them.
I also learned that philosophically I pretty much do not like working with people in that sort of situation (I also hate clerical jobs).
I decided to subvert from within and went back to academia. The challenge then became getting tenure, and that's another whole issue.
So here's my question: given the validity of your points about the OTW not being "radical, what sort of *practices* would you say would be appropriate (say, in a radical group that you could help form)? Based on the theory, what specific practices would be best? (I also agree with you on the strength of the open-source software! That's fantastic, and something I see given little credit by the people critiquing the archive. Of course since their argument seems to boil down to "we don't need another archive," I guess they wouldn't see forming other archives as a good idea.)
The whole excluding men issue--I see no reason for a feminist or a radical feminist group to exclude men at this point in time although there is every reason for some women to form groups that are women-only, but given that a HUGE amount of the criticism of the "valuing female communtiy" is coming from women, not men, and a lot of the criticisms of "feminism" come from women (often calling themselves feminist), it's not as easy as let's keep the men out. For one thing, the possible "whiteness" of the Board hasn't even been raised/debated (or if it has, I haven't seen it). The class issues are perhaps tied up with the whole critique of academics. Nobody's talking much about sexuality/gender identity--but I strongly suspect that the majority of the Board, as of fandom, are straight.
That said, of course, I was the one involved in aca-fan debate saying why spend a lot of time trying to explain ourselves to the men? Let's just do what we want to do, and those few men who understand (i.e. are feminists, who are working to dismantle their own and institutionalized systems of male privilege) will join in. I'm sort of in the space (in this one small space) described by Joanna Russ (I'm up early for some reason and not at work where all my Russ books are) of just not caring what men say, and being busy with my own stuff.
But deep down and simply; what practices do you want to see? How would you do things differently?
Because (given my age and years in the system and the fact that I'm probably not a radical anymore, given all of that), I'm seeing OTW as a lot more potentially radical than you or heyiya. Women are trying to own the space. Women who are not a corporation are creating a group to own/control space for fans who *wish* to use it.
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part 2
Date: 2008-01-13 11:27 am (UTC)There are, I am sure, groups committed to social change which are much more effective, but I do not think I found them.
I also learned that philosophically I pretty much do not like working with people in that sort of situation (I also hate clerical jobs).
I decided to subvert from within and went back to academia. The challenge then became getting tenure, and that's another whole issue.
So here's my question: given the validity of your points about the OTW not being "radical, what sort of *practices* would you say would be appropriate (say, in a radical group that you could help form)? Based on the theory, what specific practices would be best? (I also agree with you on the strength of the open-source software! That's fantastic, and something I see given little credit by the people critiquing the archive. Of course since their argument seems to boil down to "we don't need another archive," I guess they wouldn't see forming other archives as a good idea.)
The whole excluding men issue--I see no reason for a feminist or a radical feminist group to exclude men at this point in time although there is every reason for some women to form groups that are women-only, but given that a HUGE amount of the criticism of the "valuing female communtiy" is coming from women, not men, and a lot of the criticisms of "feminism" come from women (often calling themselves feminist), it's not as easy as let's keep the men out. For one thing, the possible "whiteness" of the Board hasn't even been raised/debated (or if it has, I haven't seen it). The class issues are perhaps tied up with the whole critique of academics. Nobody's talking much about sexuality/gender identity--but I strongly suspect that the majority of the Board, as of fandom, are straight.
That said, of course, I was the one involved in aca-fan debate saying why spend a lot of time trying to explain ourselves to the men? Let's just do what we want to do, and those few men who understand (i.e. are feminists, who are working to dismantle their own and institutionalized systems of male privilege) will join in. I'm sort of in the space (in this one small space) described by Joanna Russ (I'm up early for some reason and not at work where all my Russ books are) of just not caring what men say, and being busy with my own stuff.
But deep down and simply; what practices do you want to see? How would you do things differently?
Because (given my age and years in the system and the fact that I'm probably not a radical anymore, given all of that), I'm seeing OTW as a lot more potentially radical than you or